


Our hearts beat the rhythm of a love song, just for you

by merle_p



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M, Schmoop, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-22
Updated: 2010-05-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/pseuds/merle_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt and Mike have shared everything since they were three. Why should falling in love change that?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our hearts beat the rhythm of a love song, just for you

**Author's Note:**

> Slight spoilers for first season up to 1.20  
> _Glee_ belongs to FOX  
> This was written for the [Birthday prompt battle](http://community.livejournal.com/gleeslash/507819.html) at [](http://community.livejournal.com/gleeslash/profile)[**gleeslash**](http://community.livejournal.com/gleeslash/). The prompt was: _Mike/Kurt/Matt: Mike and Matt do everything together. Including Kurt._ This should have been a porny threesome, but somehow it turned into something completely different.

When Matt is three years old, his mother starts to worry. Oh, Matt is strong and healthy, surprisingly fast on his short chubby legs, and about the sweetest kid she's ever seen. There's just one problem: He still doesn't talk. He understands people alright, she knows he does, and he doesn't have any problem making himself understood; but the fact remains that he refuses to open his mouth for anything other than food.

"There's nothing wrong with him," the doctor says, "some kids just take longer than others," but that doesn't do anything to reassure her. Because already it singles him out among the other children, and she's afraid that soon, they will be old enough to see that he's different, and mock him because of it.

But then, on a sunday in the summer before Matt turns four, she takes him to the playground down the block. She settles on a bench near the sandbox and watches him play, build landscapes from sand, volcanoes and rivers and valleys, when a little Asian boy sneaks closer to contemplate Matt's work.

Matt pauses in his work and looks up, and she tenses, ready to interfere if things get ugly. But there is no need: for a moment, the boys muster each other intently, and then they are smiling, widely, happily, and soon they are busy building a mountain together, little hands colliding in their eagerness, and not a single word has been exchanged.

And that is that. From that day on, Matt and Mike are inseparable, and Mrs. Rutherford is relieved to see that her baby boy has made a friend. Mrs. Chang is a sweet little woman who chats with her over coffee while the boys are playing, and she laughs when Mrs. Rutherford confides in her. "Mike is exactly the same," she says. "His cousin Tina is the same age, and she can talk your ear off, but Mike? He's a quiet one. Don't worry. They'll start speaking eventually."

  
They do, even if they never talk much. They stay friends, though, through primary school and junior high, and while other children have a large number of playmates, and a new best friend every other week, Matt and Mike just stick close to each other. Mrs. Chang thinks it's great, and mostly saves them trouble; but when, for his thirteenth birthday, Matt refuses to throw a party and just asks for Mike to come over to practice hip hop dance moves, his mother feels her fears sneak up on her once again.

"Do you think he might be ..." she asks her husband, that night, when the boys are upstairs in Matt's room, curled up next to each other in his bed.

"Might be what?" the man asks, distractedly, from behind the newspaper, and she throws him a quick glance.

"Gay," she says, and he looks up at that, surprised.

"Nah," he replies, waving it off. "He likes football, doesn't he?"

She nods, halfway convinced.

"You worry too much," he says. "Just wait, they'll be chasing girls soon enough. And they'll stop hanging out so much automatically."

  
He is only partly right. In their first year of senior high, they try dating Brittany. It's the obvious choice, because Brittany is friendly and likes to dance better than she likes to talk. The good thing is that Brittany herself is weird enough not to mind that she's dating two guys at once. The bad thing is that she gets distracted too easily and tends to forget that she's dating anyone at all, and that's not quite what they are looking for. They break it off soon after, and luckily, Brittany doesn't seem to care, so they manage to avoid Santana Lopez's wrath.

For two years after that, they don't date at all, just concentrate on their classes and football and making friends. They also experiment with separation: agree to split up two days a week, go out with different friends. It works for all about two weeks, until Matt panics when the guys drag him along to throw a little freshman into the dumpster next to the school parking lot. He makes an emergency call to Mike, who comes and helps him fish the little boy out of the garbage, and they decide that the spending time apart thing was a stupid idea, after all.

So they watch Puck hook up with Santana, and Finn get together with Quinn, with mild interest rather than jealousy; although one day, after watching a couple of seniors make out in the bleachers, Matt looks down at his feet and asks: "Do you think we are doing it wrong?"

Mike doesn't have to ask what he's talking about, and he doesn't have to think about an answer.

"No," he says firmly. "We'll find someone."

  
They do, even if it doesn't happen exactly like they expected, and definitely not like their mothers may have hoped.

What happens is that one day, the tiny guy they once fished out of a trash can walks onto the football field and scores a perfect field goal to the sounds of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies". Coach Tanaka is delighted, Finn embarrassed, Puck annoyed, and the rest of the team just flabbergasted and confused – but Mike turns towards Matt, raising a single eyebrow, and Matt smiles slightly and shrugs.

A week later finds them in the Glee practice room after last period, and soon enough, they discover that they are easily the best dancers of the group. It makes them proud, and happier than anything in a long time, and it makes Mrs. Rutherford worry again.

"Are you sure about this, honey?" she asks over dinner, frowning in that sad little way of hers. "What about football? What about your future?"

Matt doesn't say anything, just smiles vaguely and runs off to practice the new number with Mike at his place, and his mother doesn't bring it up again.

  
The tiny boy turns out to be Kurt Hummel, and they each begin to whisper the name to themselves, late at night, when they are alone in their beds; they savor the taste of the words on their tongues and feel strangely guilty for not wanting to share this with the other at the same time.

Kurt is proud and sharp, and delicate and soft, and articulate in a way they never were. He dances, with a kind of grace that seems too lascivious for his sweet little face; and he sings, so beautifully that it makes them want to cry.

It's not them Kurt sings for, however, never them. Kurt sings to his father, to an imaginary audience, to Mercedes. To Finn. They wish they could make Kurt look at them the way he looks at him, but they don't know how, because they have never fought for someone before. If they were better with words, maybe, because Kurt likes words, exotic, foreign, complicated words; but they have known forever that language will fail them when they need it the most.

And so they bid their time and watch Kurt sing his heart out to Finn. Until, one day, he doesn't anymore.

He's sitting in the sports hall when they come to him, watching the basketball practice with slumped shoulders and dulled eyes. They sit down, one on each side of him, and Matt hands him the coffee they bought, the kind he likes, or so Mercedes said when they asked.

He looks up at them, surprised and wary, but not scared – they never gave him a reason to be, after all.

"Why?" he asks, but he takes the cup with careful hands.

"You are sad," Matt states, and Kurt raises an eyebrow at that.

"That's all?"

"Do you want to go see a movie with us?" Mike asks, and hates how is voice is shaking just as much as his hands.

"That's not an answer," Kurt says, and then he looks back and forth between them, staring long and hard, but he seems to find what he's looking for. "Why not," he says, and that's how it starts.

  
They take him to the movies, once, twice, buy him popcorn and diet coke, make sure that he gets home safely afterwards, even if he has his own car and a can of pepper spray in his purse. They drag him to the park and let him feed the squirrels, smiling when he relaxes enough to coo at the animals, even if he blushes in embarrassment right afterwards. They put their money together and get tickets for a show in Marion that he said he wanted to see, and they pick him up at his place in Mike's parents' car. He seems content and happy, and doesn't seem to mind that he has to carry the conversation almost alone, but when they drop him off at his house afterwards, he turns serious and sighs.

"At the risk of getting beaten up, I'm going to ask you something now. Because honestly? All this feels a lot like I've been going on dates with someone." He pauses and takes a breath. "I just don't have any idea which one of you."

They shuffle their feet at that, and blush, and don't know what to tell him, even though their hearts are beating hard in their chests. And Kurt watches them for a while, and then his eyes widen and he says:

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Is that a no?" Mike asks quickly, because he has to, and maybe they both look as panicked as they feel, because Kurt shakes his head .

"It's not a no," he says. "Just – does this mean you two are, like, a couple?"

Matt pulls a face, and Mike snorts. "God, no!" he says, as if that explains everything, but it's not enough for Kurt, who believes in long explanations and good reasons, and so Matt swallows and straightens his back.

"We like you," he says, and Kurt actually laughs a little at that.

"Yes, I think I got that part." He lifts his hand to push back the bangs from his forehead and nods. "Fine."

"Fine?" Mike asks, and Kurt just smiles, before he gets on his toes and presses a quick kiss to Mike's cheek, then does the same to Matt.

"See you tomorrow," he says, and they watch him walk up the path to his house, hands raised to their cheeks where the feeling of Kurt's lips lingers.

  
Being with Kurt is awkward, and amazing, and different from everything they've known. None of them has ever been with a boy, and that they all have kissed Brittany at some point doesn't really help when they reach with hesitant hands for naked skin and soft hair. They figure it out, in the end, and having Kurt pressed up between them, like a clutch that links them together, a magnet that pulls them in, is like flying apart and coming home, all at once.

One day, Kurt's father walks in on them, and they struggle to find the right words, to explain what this means to them, and why it has to be like this. Why it has to be Kurt. But they find that "We love him" are the only words that Burt Hummel needs to hear, because he is not a man of big words either, and Kurt is there to explain the rest.

When people start to ask, Kurt smiles and says: "Well, I'm high maintenance. One guy alone couldn't keep up with me," and they only love him more for that: for making this about himself, for not telling people that they are just that strange.

  
They fight once, during their last year at school: when Matt finds the college applications on Kurt's desk only weeks before Christmas and throws them at Kurt's face with angry hands and dark eyes.

"What was I supposed to do?" Kurt yells, tears in his eyes as he kneels to pick up the scattered sheets. "You never say anything when I ask what you want to do after school! What did you expect me to do? I'm not going to stay in Lima for you if I don't even know if you're in this for good. You haven't even told your parents about me!"

Matt leaves, without an answer; Mike gives Kurt one pleading look before he follows. Kurt throws a shoe after them. It hits the wall with a clang, and then the door slams shut. Later, nobody can remember which one of them closed it.

  
There is something missing. The two of them: before, it was always enough; satisfying their need for company, for conversation. Now, it's too quiet, an absence of noise, like pressing a phone against your ear and listening to the silence after the other person has ended the call. Kurt doesn't talk to them, and they watch him walk the hallways from afar, head bent, face pale, with a longing that can't be put into words.

For the first time since that day at the playground, they don't understand each other. For the first time since they met, they feel miles apart.

  
When Matt does not spend his weekend with Mike, but holed up in his room, refusing to come out even for dinner, Mrs. Rutherford knows that something is wrong.

"Did you and Mike have a fight?" she asks. Once, she was secretly hoping for this. Now, she doesn't like the idea that much anymore.

"No," Matt says, and she actually flinches, because she didn't really expect him to talk. "No, Mom," he says, looking so serious, "Mom, there's something I need to tell you."

  
They show up on Kurt's door step on Christmas Eve.

"What do you want?" he asks, looking tired and unhappy.

They push the stack of papers at him, and his eyes widen when he sees what they are.

"College applications?" he asks, weakly. "For Columbia? NYU? CalTech? Stanford? What ..."

"Our grades are good enough," Mike says. "We can go wherever you want."

"Are you serious?" Kurt asks. He looks like he's about to cry. Matt scrambles for the small velvet box in his pocket. The saleswoman looked at them strangely when they asked for three rings, but she didn't say anything while she rang them up.

"We are serious," Matt says and opens the box.

  
When Matt told her about about Kurt, his mother cried. She had expected him to tell her that he got someone pregnant, that he'd failed a class, or driven a friend's car into a stop sign, and she could have dealt with either of those. But this?

"Let's ask the boy to come over for dinner," Mrs. Chang says. As usual, she takes this much better than her friend. "I'm sure he's a nice boy."

"He's _gay_," Mrs. Rutherford sobs, and Mrs. Chang raises a brow. "Apparently, so is your son."

"It's probably just a phase," her husband says, when she tells him, reluctantly putting down the sports section of the paper.

"They bought rings!" she shouts, and he shrugs.

"I gave my first ring to a girl when I was five," he says. "Of course it was just plastic, but I was still convinced that I'd marry her. No I don't even know her name anymore."

  
She only has to take one look at the boy to know that it's not a phase. Kurt Hummel is not someone that people are into just for a while. And their sons never easily changed their minds, not about something like this.

But watching them together, seeing how Matt and Mike look at him, how he looks at them, it suddenly doesn't hurt that much.

And she might not realize it that day; but years later, she'll look back and know: this was the moment she stopped to worry.


End file.
